On solitude and chickens

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. -- Thoreau

There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall. -- Colette

I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other. -- Rilke

As innocent as a new-laid egg. -- W. S. Gilbert

Raising children is like being pecked to death by chickens. --Anonymous, but my mother gave it to me!

Language...has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone. --Paul Johannes Tillich

Life begins when you plant a garden. -- Chinese proverb

The great omission in American life is solitude...that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit. --Marya Mannes

If you were born lucky, even your rooster will lay eggs. -- Russian proverb

When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest. --Antonio Porchia

Cocks may crow, but it's the hen that lays the eggs. -- Attr. Margaret Thatcher

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. -- Henry David Thoreau